Heavily-armed criminals are subjecting residents of northern Côte d’Ivoire to a relentless pace of often-violent attacks on buses and private vehicles and in villages. Security forces have largely failed to protect the population or investigate the crimes.

Cote d'Ivoire

Heavily-armed criminals are subjecting residents of northern Côte d’Ivoire to a relentless pace of often-violent attacks on buses and private vehicles and in villages. Security forces have largely failed to protect the population or investigate the crimes.

Ivorian authorities should promptly surrender Simone Gbagbo, wife of the former Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo, to the International Criminal Court (ICC). ICC judges ruled on December 11, 2014, that the court had the authority to hear the case against her. The ICC has charged Simone Gbagbo with four counts of crimes against humanity in relation to the deadly violence that followed Côte d’Ivoire’s 2010 presidential election.

Judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC) will begin hearing evidence to determine whether to confirm charges in the case against Charles Blé Goudé, a close ally of the former Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo.

The June 12, 2014 decision by the International Criminal Court (ICC) by a majority of judges in the case of former Côte d’Ivoire President Laurent Gbagbo should remind those in positions of power that they are not immune from justice. A majority of Pre-Trial Chamber I confirmed the charges of crimes against humanity against Gbagbo and moved the case to trial.

Five months after the renewal of the Special Investigation and Examination Unit (Cellule spéciale d’enquête et d’instruction - CSEI) charged with investigating crimes committed during the post-electoral crisis in Ivory Coast, no implementing decree has yet been adopted to render the Unit genuinely operational. A functional investigations unit is essential to fighting impunity in Ivory Coast. The failure to render the Unit effective has led a number of Ivorian and international human rights and victim support organisations call on the Ivorian authorities to enable the CSEI to carry out its mandate.

Over my last five years as a researcher with Human Rights Watch, I’ve listened to hundreds of men, women, and children in Côte d’Ivoire recount horrific abuses they saw or experienced linked to the country’s decade-long politico-military crisis. I wish I could say with confidence that these victims will have their day in court. But while President Alassane Ouattara’s government has overseen an economic rebound in the three years since elections sparked five months of deadly violence, it has left largely untouched the legacy of impunity for those in power, threatening the sustainability of the country’s recovery.

The Ivorian government took an important step in supporting accountability for the country’s postelection atrocities by renewing the mandate of the special unit investigating those crimes. The government now needs to ensure adequate staffing, security, and independence for the body to carry out robust investigations.

With the slaughter of civilians in Syria still horribly unrestrained, it is easy to be discouraged about human rights. There is, of course, every reason for outrage about Syria, and about the international community's narrow focus on peace talks, unlikely as they are to succeed anytime soon, without any comparable effort to stop the killing of civilians while the fighting continues. But there has been human rights progress in many areas in 2013. That is of obvious importance for the immediate beneficiaries, but it also should encourage efforts for progress on persistent abuses elsewhere. Here are a few of the human rights milestones of the past year.